Professor John Mearsheimer analyzes Trump's return, arguing his "America-first" policy faces immediate tests in Iran and Ukraine where Russia is winning via North Korean troops. He dismisses Gaza relocation plans as impossible, predicts a frozen conflict with 30-40% of Ukraine annexed, and warns this weakens US containment of China while the erosion of liberal democracy poses an existential threat to the West. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Trump vs Biden on War00:06:43
Trump is a man of peace.
He is not a warmonger.
Joe Biden was a warmonger.
The question is, will we attack Iran?
Does Netanyahu survive?
He's a politician who has at least nine lives.
He is ultimately responsible for what happened on October 7th.
And Israel failed in Gaza.
Trump's comments are divorced from reality.
The Russians are in the driver's seat on the battlefield.
If they're so strong, why did they need to recruit 10,000 North Korean troops?
One could argue that you can never have enough troops.
There's only one reason Vladimir Putin needed those troops, and that's because he himself has his own manpower issues.
The Russians are doing quite well on the battlefield.
It's the Ukrainians who, by almost all accounts, are in truly deep trouble.
President Trump took the plaudits for forcing through a Gaza ceasefire deal and hostage release in the final days before his inauguration.
But this week, the new president has been criticized for suggesting that Gaza should be cleaned out with Palestine relocated to Egypt or Jordan.
Trump's America-first foreign policy is about to be put to the test on multiple fronts.
He's also taken a swipe at Russia's President Putin, warning him to end the ridiculous war in Ukraine or face a tidal wave of sanctions.
We're returning to Uncensor to try and unpack all this.
One of the most influential and controversial thinkers in the world on the topics of war and power, Professor John Mearshan.
Professor, great to have you back.
I'm glad to be here, Piers.
I want to start by playing you a clip.
This was from your last interview with me, in which you were not hopeful that whatever happened in the American election, it would have any significant impact on the Israel and Gaza conflict.
Let's take a look.
I don't think that the outcome of this presidential race will have any effect on what's going on in the Middle East.
The United States will continue to support Israel unreservedly or unconditionally, whether Donald Trump is in the White House or Kamala Harris is in the White House.
Nothing's going to change.
I think with regard to the Middle East, as I just said, they're Tweedledee and Tweedle Dumb.
Well, Tweedle D and Tweedle Dumb, so we've got rid of one of them.
I'm not quite sure which one you would categorize as the dumb one, but one of them's gone, obviously.
Donald Trump is now president again.
And there does seem to have been immediate action in terms of a ceasefire that is so far holding.
I mean, do you think you were wrong?
Or does your overview that actually it doesn't make a lot of difference?
What's your feeling now?
Well, I think, Piers, that the principal reason that you got a ceasefire now under Donald Trump is because the Israelis were in deep trouble in Gaza.
In a very important way, Trump was pushing on an open door.
You want to understand that the IDF, the Israeli military, had not defeated Hamas.
It was incapable of defeating Hamas.
The Israeli military was suffering significant casualties in Gaza.
And the Israeli military, which is configured to fight short wars, not long wars, is overextended and was beginning to come apart at the seams.
So the IDF itself was putting huge pressure on Netanyahu to cut a deal, to have a ceasefire, because it could not continue to operate the way it was inside of Gaza.
So it was this situation that allowed Trump to come in and push hard.
There's no question he pushed hard to get this deal that's now in place.
The deal was pretty well the deal that was available from kind of May onwards under the Biden administration.
I mean, you gave some credit there to Trump for getting this actually off and running, the ceasefire.
I mean, it seems to people on the outside of this that Trump was a significant factor through his Middle East envoy going around putting the hard yards in and cracking a few heads together that actually, if Trump hadn't won, it is highly unlikely we'd be in this scenario.
Do you think that that's correct?
No, I don't.
I think that the Biden administration or what would have been the Kamala-Harris administration would have been able to get a ceasefire.
It might have taken a little bit of time.
But the more important point, Piers, is that Donald Trump is going to remain profoundly committed to Israel moving forward, just the way Joe Biden was profoundly committed to Israel over his four years in the White House, and just as Kamala Harris would have been profoundly committed to Israel if she had defeated Trump.
Is the difference perhaps that Trump essentially is a man of peace, which is a curious word to use about him, given how incendiary he can be a lot of the time, that he really believes that war is a very bad thing, not just for human life, but for business, and that therefore, both with Israel and will come on to Ukraine, that he just wants these things sorted because he wants to get on with actually what he preferred to be doing, which is doing big deals.
I think there's no question that Trump is a man of peace, to use your phrases.
He is not a warmonger.
And I think that Joe Biden was a warmonger or is a warmonger.
And I think that Trump is not interested in starting any new wars, as he made clear.
And I think the issue on which I may be proved wrong regarding my claim that there's not much difference between Biden and Trump has to do with Iran.
The question is, will we attack Iran?
I think the Biden administration did not want to attack Iran, but I think that they were more inclined to do so, if necessary, than Trump will be.
I think that Trump does not, under any circumstances, want to have to attack Iran because he is not a warmonger.
So I think there is a difference between the two presidents.
And I think the one issue where I may be proved wrong is on Iran.
And let's hope I'm proven wrong because the last thing the United States needs and the Middle East needs is a war involving Iran.
The Two-State Solution Stalls00:15:19
Interesting what you said about the IDF and about the war with Hamas.
I mean, what was pretty alarming to people were two things were quite alarming.
One was before the ceasefire, in the days preceding it, was an admission from the American intelligence that they believed that for every Hamas terrorist who'd been killed, they'd already been replaced by other people who shared that ideology.
And secondly, you saw some evidence of that when the first tranche of hostages were released.
And you just saw these mob scenes around these young women where Hamas' insignia was on full display.
And it was a clearly deliberate show of force that we're not defeated.
In fact, quite the opposite.
What did you make of that?
I think what it shows, Piers, is that Israel has suffered a significant defeat in Gaza.
You want to understand that as a result of this ceasefire, not only is Hamas alive and well, but the Israelis, to my amazement, are leaving Gaza.
Netanyahu said they were going to be there for the long term.
It was quite clear with this general's plan that everybody talked about that Israel was bent on ethnically cleansing northern Gaza.
If you look at what's happening today on the news, there are huge numbers of Palestinians moving back into northern Gaza.
And furthermore, humanitarian aid is flowing in.
And as you pointed out, if you look at Hamas, it is alive and well.
So I think this is a serious defeat for Israel.
This idea that President Trump put forward that perhaps all the displaced Gazans could go to Egypt and Jordan.
I mean, I'm in Saudi Arabia at the moment.
And certainly the feeling I'm getting in the region generally is that's a complete non-starter for Arabic people, that that would happen because they would fear, probably with some reason, that there are certainly members of Netanyahu's cabinet who would be quite happy never to see any of them come back.
And that's been their game plan for some of them from the start of this.
Do you think there's any chance that this would happen?
I think there's hardly any chance.
You want to remember that Israel's principal goal since October 7th, vis-à-vis the Palestinians in Gaza, was to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians.
Israel's principal goal, although it was not talked about very much in the Western media, was to drive the Palestinians out.
They failed.
Look at the pictures on the television today.
What's happening is the Palestinians are returning to northern Gaza.
Exactly the opposite is happening.
And what is Netanyahu going to do now, or what is Trump going to do now?
They're going to force 2.3 million Palestinians to leave Gaza?
You want to remember that these people are not going to leave voluntarily.
And there are about 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza.
The idea that Israel, with the United States helping, can drive them out into Egypt, Jordan, is just not a serious argument.
What happens now?
I mean, first, do you think this ceasefire is going to hold?
I think it's in three parts, this first sort of six-week ceasefire.
Do you think it's going to hold for that long?
Secondly, what happens after that?
Well, let me ask you first of all that question.
Do you think the ceasefire will hold?
Well, I think the ceasefire will hold until all the hostages are out.
There are two phases to the ceasefire.
Each one is six weeks.
And in the first phase, 33 of the 98 hostages come out.
And then in the second phase, this is the second six weeks, the remaining 65 hostages come out.
And I think it is likely that the ceasefire will hold up to that point.
But then we morph into the question that you're asking is what is the long term for Gaza?
And that's a very difficult question to answer.
I find it hard to believe that the Israelis are going to go back in there and they're going to start all over again where they started in October 2023.
That just doesn't make sense to me.
But then the question is, what happens inside of Gaza?
You want to remember that Hamas is effectively won, which means Hamas is effectively going to be in control of Gaza, which is apparently not acceptable to either Israel or the United States.
So the question is, how does this end?
And it's very hard to say.
Well, also, you have a leader of the Palestinian Authority who's in his 80s, and there's a lot of concern that if Hamas was not to have any role in leading Gaza after this, any form of government, then who actually would?
Would it be the Palestinian Authority who, to many people's eyes, are too damaged to do that?
And if it's not the Palestinian Authority or Hamas, then who the hell is it?
I don't know.
It's certainly not the Palestinian Authority.
The Palestinian Authority was damaged goods before October 7th, and they're in even worse shape today.
It's hard to imagine them coming into Gaza and running the place.
The Palestinian Authority is seen as being complicitous with the Israelis.
Many Palestinians, maybe most Palestinians, think that the Palestinian Authority does Israel's dirty work in the West Bank.
And the last thing they need is for the PA to come into Gaza and do Israel's dirty work there.
So it's not going to be the PA.
It is possible that some sort of new organization or institution will be created, but it's hard to see what that is at this point in time.
And furthermore, even if you replace Hamas, whoever comes in to replace Hamas is going to have deeply hostile relations with Israel, because Israel is interested not only in cleansing Gaza, but Israel is deeply interested in not giving the Palestinians a state of their own.
And the end result of that is the Palestinians are going to continue to resist.
You know, we had a first intifada and we had a second intifada before we had October 7th.
So if you don't have some sort of meaningful peace agreement where the Palestinians get some sense of sovereignty over a fixed piece of land, there's no chance that this is going to go away.
You're going to have apartheid for as far as the eye can see.
And apartheid, from my point of view, is a prescription for disaster for Israel, for the Palestinians, and for the United States.
Yeah, I mean, it does seem to be a very concerning situation because I've always felt from a start, I felt several things.
One, I felt that Israel had a fundamental duty to its people to respond with force after October the 7th.
They had to, particularly given that Hamas went on record on camera within a week saying we're going to keep doing this as many times as we can get away with it.
So if you're Israel, you had to do something big.
The problem was what was proportionate and what would not end up, if they weren't careful about their response, being a situation that would inflame rather than douse down the threat.
And it's very hard to see right now, despite all the protestations from Benjamin Netanyahu, that he's won and everything else.
When you see the scenes going on with these hostages being released with so many Hamas terrorists around, so many people supporting them, and you get the intelligence reports from the Americans saying that they believe they've all been replaced anyway by people with the same ideology.
The very fear that I've had, which is that you can kill a group of terrorists as you identify them, but if you don't kill the ideology, and in fact you fuel it, you could end up with a worse scenario going forward than you had before.
I agree completely.
I mean, the fact is that there is no purely military solution to this problem.
The Israelis have this belief that they can use the big stick, they can use military force, what they sometimes call the Iron Wall, to beat the Palestinians into submission.
They've been trying this formula for decades.
It does not work.
The only way you're going to resolve this conflict is to come up with a political solution.
And this is the principal reason that so many American presidents have pushed hard for a two-state solution.
A two-state solution is a political solution, and it gives the Palestinians a sovereign state of their own.
And most people recognize, at least outside of Israel, that that is the only way you're ever going to shut this conflict down.
But the problem with a two-state solution is that Netanyahu has shown zero interest, it seems to me, for more than 20 years in having a two-state solution.
In fact, if you look at the history since the start of the new century, Netanyahu was very, very keen for billions of dollars to be funneled to Hamas from 2005 onwards and didn't seem to have any idea what they were then spending that money on.
And then we find out on October the 7th that she spent it on a very sophisticated tunnel system, which allowed them to then run and hide among civilians, making the response from Israel almost impossible in the way that they were conducting it without massive civilian loss.
So it seemed to me that at every stage of this, Netanyahu's desire for a two-state solution has been almost non-existent, and yet he's still prime minister.
So if the person in charge of Israel at the moment has no interest in a two-state solution, then although most people outside think it's the only way this ever eventually gets resolved, how does it get resolved?
Well, it's important to emphasize, Piers, that Netanyahu is hardly the only Israeli leader who's opposed to a two-state solution.
There's a rich history of opposition to two-states in the Israeli national security establishment.
So Netanyahu is not an anomaly here.
You also want to ask yourself the question, given what's happened since October 7th in Gaza and even what's going on in the West Bank, can you really imagine a workable two-state solution?
I thought a two-state solution was dead before October 7th, but it's deader than dead at this point in time, just given the events since October 7th.
So I don't see that as a viable alternative.
You then raise the question, what is the solution here?
And I don't see any solution.
I think what you're going to get is pretty much a continuation of the situation that existed before October 7th, which is where Greater Israel is effectively an apartheid state and where the Palestinians who live in the West Bank and in Gaza are constantly looking for opportunities to rise up against the Israelis and create a first intifada, second intifada, or another October 7th.
This is a disastrous situation for Israel.
And of course, it's a disastrous situation for the Palestinians as well.
Donald Trump, obviously very pro-Israeli, but he's also got very good relationships with people like the Crown Prince here in Saudi Arabia.
He's made it clear he wants to go and see him sooner rather than later, as he did last time when he won office.
And there's obviously, I think, a desire for more normalization with Israel if this situation gets resolved.
And they want it resolved in the Middle East on the Arab side with a two-state solution.
Can you see any more normalization of relations between countries like Saudi, for example, with Israel, if it isn't resolved?
I think there is a chance, maybe even a good chance, that you can have somewhere in the future, not too distant future, another Abraham Accord.
You remember Trump was the person who put together the Abraham Accords when he was president the first time around.
And he really wants an Abraham Accord with Saudi Arabia.
It is possible that the Saudis, who have no special place in their heart for the Palestinians, would be willing to agree to an Abraham record.
But the question you have to ask yourself is, what are the consequences of that?
It has zero effect on the Palestinian problem, both in Gaza and in the West Bank.
It has zero effect on the problem with Hezbollah.
It has zero effect on what's going on in Syria.
And it has zero effect on what's going on with regard to Iran.
So an Abraham Accord may improve relations between the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia in particular and Israel.
But in terms of dealing with the really thorny issues that are out there, it matters for little.
Does Netanyahu survive?
There's a lot of heat now coming from a lot of Israelis saying he thinks he's got this completely wrong.
They shouldn't have done this deal with Hamas.
That Hamas' show of strength is a reminder to people they haven't been beaten far from it.
Could the pressure on Netanyahu get to the extent that he has to resign?
You know, he's a politician who has at least nine lives, so he's not the sort of person that you want to say is heading for the exit.
But let me just say that, first of all, he is ultimately responsible for what happened on October 7th.
And number two, it's becoming manifestly clear to the Israeli public and other Israeli elites that Israel failed in Gaza.
And you see all sorts of pieces, including pieces written by Israeli generals in the Israeli media making that point.
So, you know, it's now clear what the outcome is in Gaza.
And it is not good for him.
The other thing is that his health is not good.
He just had his prostate removed.
And there's been talk that he's having heart problems as well.
So I think given his health and given the state of Israel today, I wouldn't be surprised if he's pushed overboard in the next couple months.
Putin's Frozen Conflict Ambitions00:08:33
Extraordinary times.
Let's turn to the other big war that's been raging that we've talked about multiple times in the last year, Ukraine and Russia.
Donald Trump, of course, famously said he would get all this resolved in 24 hours.
I don't think that even he believed that was possible.
I think he's discovering that it's a very, very complex thing to try and resolve now, not least because there's a kind of stalemate where a lot of people are now dying on both sides and not a lot of territory is being gained or regained.
And that there's just a slaughter going on of young troops.
And that ultimately, it's almost impossible to see how it gets resolved in the sense that Vladimir Putin is showing no signs of wanting to obviously suffer any kind of defeat or lose or retreat.
And Ukraine are adamant they're not going to give up territory, but they've already lost a lot of territory.
How does this get, even for a skilled deal maker like Donald Trump, how does he navigate through to a deal that doesn't give Putin a big win and doesn't give Ukraine a shuddering loss, but avoids giving Putin pretty much what he's taken?
Well, it's hard to see how Trump gets a good deal.
First of all, I would dispute your claim that this is a stalemate and people are getting slaughtered on both sides.
I think if you look carefully at what's happening on the battlefield, the Russians are clearly winning.
They're steadily moving forward and capturing all sorts of strategic territory.
They're inflicting, in my opinion, many more casualties on the Ukrainians than the Ukrainians are inflicting on the Russians.
And all of this is to say I think the Russians are in the driver's seat.
They believe that they have the military capability to win this war.
The second point I'd make is that in terms of actually getting a deal, Putin believes that Ukraine in NATO is an existential threat.
And Putin is demanding that the United States and Ukraine accept the fact that Ukraine will never be either a de jure or a de facto member of NATO.
Furthermore, Putin is demanding that Ukraine and the West, and here we're talking mainly about the United States, accept the fact that he has a next or Russia has a next for Ukrainian oblasts plus Crimea.
Getting the West to accept that, and certainly getting Ukraine to accept that, is going to be extremely difficult, if not impossible.
And the same thing is true with regard to a neutral Ukraine.
So I find it hard to believe how Trump is going to be able to agree to the principal demands of Putin for settling this conflict.
So I don't think you're going to get a meaningful peace agreement here.
I think what you're going to get is a frozen conflict.
At some point, I think the conflict is going to peter out and you'll have a frozen conflict.
But the end result of that is that the potential for that frozen conflict to turn into a hot conflict once again will be ever present.
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Yeah, I mean, it's almost impossible to imagine that having taken Crimea, if Putin is able to hang on to the territory he's taken in this phase of his war with Ukraine, he's not going to want more ultimately.
I mean, why wouldn't he try and get more?
It would be in his nature to do so, wouldn't it?
I agree completely.
I think he's taking about 20% now.
He's taken four oblasts in the easternmost part of Ukraine plus Crimea.
And I think that he will try to take roughly 40% of Ukrainian territory.
I think he'll try to take Odessa.
I think he'll try to take Kharkiv.
And I think he'll probably try to take two or three other oblasts.
And what he will attempt to do is turn Ukraine into a dysfunctional rump state and put Russia in a position where it controls a huge swath of territory in eastern Ukraine, including Odessa, which will then prevent Ukraine from having access to the Black Sea.
And the fact is, Piers, every time people in the West and Ukrainians talk about bringing Ukraine into NATO, that just gives the Russians greater incentive to take more territory and to do more to wreck Ukraine.
So this situation, in my opinion, is disastrous for Ukraine.
It's disastrous in the extreme for Ukraine.
But it also means that it's going to be exceedingly difficult for President Trump to get any kind of meaningful peace agreement with the Russians.
Well, he's already come out and explained one way he may try and do this.
He wrote on his Truth Social platform on Wednesday, I'm going to do Russia, whose economy is failing, and President Putin a very big favor.
Settle now and stop this ridiculous war.
It's only going to get worse.
If we don't make a deal, and soon, I have no other choice but to put high tariffs of taxes, tariffs, and sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States and various other participating countries.
Let's get this war, which wouldn't have started if I were president, over with.
We can do it the easy way or the hard way.
And the easy way is always better.
It's time to make a deal.
Now, Putin responded by telling a Russian state TV journalist, we believe the current president's statements about his readiness to work together.
We are always open to this and ready for negotiations.
It would be better for us to meet based on the realities of today to talk calmly.
And he described his relationship with Trump as business-like, pragmatic, and trustworthy.
So, I mean, unusually diplomatic from Putin there.
But Trump wielding the card of big tariffs in particular that he's just done very successfully with Colombia in one of the shortest showdowns in history.
Obviously, a very different situation with Putin.
But, you know, is he right in saying that Russia's economy is failing?
And that actually, if America did really turn the screw economically on them with sanctions, it could make Putin come to the table?
I think that Trump's comments are divorced from reality.
First of all, as I said before, the Russians are in the driver's seat on the battlefield.
There's nothing that Trump can do to turn the tide on the battlefield.
And this, of course, is why he emphasizes putting greater economic sanctions on the Russians.
But this is not going to work because there's hardly any room for more economic sanctions because we have so thoroughly sanctioned the Russians.
Don't you think Joe Biden, who was deeply committed to defeating the Russians in Ukraine, has put almost all of the possible sanctions on Russia?
And the answer is yes, he has.
So it's not like there are these sanctions in the back closet that Trump can turn to and then bring the Russian economy to its knees.
And furthermore, the Russian economy is not doing badly.
And by some accounts, it's doing quite well.
So the idea that he's going to really damage the Ukrainian, excuse me, the Russian economy, I believe doesn't make any sense.
But furthermore, let's assume that he can really hurt the Russian economy.
Russia's Military and Economic Strength00:15:49
The question you want to ask yourself is what will the Russians do?
Will they capitulate?
I do not think they will capitulate because the Russians believe that Ukraine in NATO, they believe that the West winning is an existential threat to Russia.
So the Russians are committed to pay an enormous price to prevail in Ukraine.
So even if I'm wrong and Trump is right and he can damage the Russian economy in a significant way, I think in the final analysis, the Russians will not throw up their hands and surrender.
they will continue to fight on.
Now, one response I would have to that, which I just wanted to put to you as a potential clue that perhaps you may not be entirely correct about your reading of it, is both in Russia's military and economic strength.
It's what happened in Syria, because it seemed to me very strange that this bunch of rebels were able to run through Syria, depose Bashar al-Assad, who immediately fled to Russia, and that Russia basically decamped just as fast themselves and didn't try and stop this happening.
Having taken a bit of a stranglehold on Assad's side, you know, a decade ago.
Was there nothing about that that made you think, well, that's a very curious response by Russia, and that maybe it was a sign they're not as strong as you think?
I think what happened in Syria is that American sanctions on Syria, coupled with the fact that the United States basically controlled all of Syrian oil and therefore cut off the revenues from that oil to the Syrian government, ended up strangling the Syrian economy, which in turn led to the hollowing out of the Syrian army.
So the Syrian army was not capable of putting up a fight in late November when the rebels started their offensive, and it quickly collapsed.
Both the Russians and the Iranians were willing to help the Syrian government, the Assad government.
They had a deep-seated interest in helping Assad, but they could not help Assad simply because his army had been hollowed out and was not capable of putting up a fight.
And there was no way the Iranians and the Russians could send their own troops to do the fighting for Assad's troops.
So the Russians and the Iranians basically had to leave Syria.
And it was clearly a defeat for them.
But the situation that Russia faced in Syria is fundamentally different than the situation that the Russians face in Ukraine.
The Russians have a huge army that has become more formidable with the passage of time.
The SAC URA, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, who was an American general, General Covello, has said that the Russian army today is a much more formidable fighting force than it was when the war broke out in February of 2022.
So you're talking about a really formidable army that believes it's fighting against a threat that is existential in nature.
And the Russians are not going to give up.
And the Russians, as I've said on a number of occasions today, are in the driver's seat on the battlefield.
If they're so strong militarily, as you say, why do they need to recruit 10,000 North Korean troops to go to Ukraine?
I have no idea.
One could argue that you can never have enough troops.
And if some country in the world said to the Russians, we're going to give you 50,000 high-quality troops to help you fight in Ukraine, the Russians, of course, would accept those troops.
So obviously some sort of deal was worked out between the two countries.
And I think the Russians would have been fools not to accept help from the North Koreans.
When you go into a war, the name of the game is to win the war as quickly as possible and hopefully to win it decisively.
And the more troops, the more high-quality troops you have, the more likely you are to achieve that goal.
So having those North Korean troops makes eminently good sense from the Russian point of view.
Well, it does, except that it's also embarrassing.
And it was certainly reported that way.
This is an embarrassment for Putin.
He's had to rely on handouts from the North Korean military.
And Syria was seen as a very emphatic embarrassment.
And you conceded that that was a defeat for both Putin and for Iran in Syria.
So, you know, you're depicting a very strong, very positive picture of Vladimir Putin and the Russians.
But there are people saying, well, look, look what happened in Syria.
Look at the fact he's bringing in North Korean troops.
Look at the intelligence reports that Trump's been receiving that he sort of alluded to, which show, contrary to what you said earlier, that actually the Russian casualties in the war with Ukraine have been extremely severe, up to 2,000 men a day in the last few months.
If you put all that together, I mean, do you accept you could be slightly over-inflating Russia's capabilities right now?
But it may be that it's all a bit smoke and mirrors.
I don't think so, Piers.
Again, I don't think there's any meaningful analogy between what happened in Syria and what's happening in Ukraine.
There's no question the Russians were embarrassed, to use your rhetoric, about what happened in Syria, but it was not a significant strategic defeat.
And again, it has little bearing on Ukraine.
With regard to Ukraine, I do not believe these Western reports about the enormous Russian casualties that we're seeing in the battles fields, on the battlefields of Ukraine.
I actually follow the actual fighting quite carefully.
And if you look at what's going on, the Russians are moving to deal with the Ukrainians in a very deliberate way.
People in the West like to talk about massive frontal attacks where the Russians suffer enormous casualties.
This is not what's happening.
The Russians are using small packets of infantry to sort of figure out where the Ukrainians are.
And then they're relying on massive artillery barrages.
They're not charging headfirst into these well-defended Ukrainian cities.
And one of the reasons that the Russian steamroller is moving very slowly or has been moving very slowly in eastern Ukraine is because the Russians are very cautious.
And the Russians are very cautious because they want to keep the casualty levels down.
The Russians fully understand that this is a war of attrition.
And in a war of attrition, it's the casualty exchange ratio that really matters.
The Russians want to make sure that they kill many more Ukrainians than Ukrainians kill Russians.
And I believe that that's exactly what's happening.
And if you read the media carefully, it's quite clear that the Ukrainians are having huge manpower problems.
They simply can't raise enough troops to replace the troops that are being killed.
And again, this is not a problem that the Russians are facing.
The Russian army is getting bigger and bigger by the month.
It is a formidable fighting force, as General Kovalo said.
I mean, Professor, you put quite a sort of positive spin on the North Korean troop part of that conversation we had.
But there are people who say there's only one reason Vladimir Putin needed those troops, and that's because he himself has his own manpower issues on the ground in Ukraine.
And that there are reports that he's been going to very poor parts of Russia and offering very large sums of money to families who lose their young men in battle.
And that that is an attempt to try and encourage more young men from the poorer parts of Russia to sign up because if they die in combat, then their families get a big payday.
None of this says to me that it is quite as strong as you seem to think they are.
Look, Piers, there's no question at any time a country fights a war of attrition like we see in Ukraine today, that those countries are going to have trouble raising troops.
You want to remember when Britain went into World War I in 1914, they had an all-volunteer military.
But by 1916, they had to go to a draft.
Why did they have to go to a draft?
Because there were not enough people who were volunteering.
What the Russians are doing is going to great lengths to raise the manpower by providing all sorts of enticements to people in different places in Russia.
This is just the way wars are fought.
There's no evidence that the Russians are not producing enough of their own troops to fight the war.
All the evidence is to the contrary.
They are having much success at raising Russian troops and getting them to fight in Ukraine.
But my point to you is: if you can get additional troops from another country like North Korea, you would be foolish in the extreme not to take those troops.
It just makes common sense.
So I think the fact that the Russians are relying to some small, and I choose my words carefully here, small extent on North Korean troops matters for little.
The Russians are doing quite well on the battlefield.
It's the Ukrainians who, by almost all accounts, are in truly deep trouble.
Well, that trouble could be compounded by the fact the new Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has announced he would pause foreign aid grants for 90 days.
President Zelensky clarified that military aid has not been stopped, but it's unclear whether humanitarian aid has been pulled.
And the Ukraine relies on the U.S. for 40% of its military needs, as we know.
I mean, we don't know how this ends, but if you were a betting man, I don't know if you are, you can tell me if you are.
But if you were a betting man in six months to a year, where do you think we're going to be with the Russia-Ukraine war?
Well, I would bet, and I'm not certain of this.
I'm just telling you what my best guess is, that a year from now you will have a frozen conflict, that Ukraine will be a dysfunctional rump state, and the West will still be talking in more guarded ways about bringing Ukraine into NATO.
And the Russians will have taken somewhere between 30 and 40% of Ukrainian territory and will be in the process of annexing all of that into a greater Russia.
I think this is a total disaster for Ukraine.
And I think it's remarkably, it was remarkably foolish of us to not shut this war down a long time ago and minimize the amount of territory that the Ukrainians lost.
But that ship has sailed.
And I think at this point in time, it just looks worse and worse for the Ukrainians and for the West as well, because this is going to be a devastating defeat for NATO.
If it ends the way you think it's going to end, many people think, well, if he's got his blood up and he's got a victory in Ukraine, then Putin won't stop there.
He's got much bigger ambitions to go and invade other countries and take more territory.
Do you think that's a possibility?
Not at all.
He's never indicated that he was interested in doing that.
And he would be foolish in the extreme to try to do that.
I believe he will not take all of Ukraine, in large part because he understands that roughly the western two-thirds of Ukraine is filled with ethnic Ukrainians who hate the Russians.
And if he tried to conquer, occupy, and integrate that part of Ukraine into a greater Russia, he would run into fierce resistance from the ethnic Ukrainians.
And the same thing is true if he invaded a country in the Baltics or Poland or Romania.
I mean, Putin is fully aware that occupying other countries is a prescription for disaster in the age of nationalism.
You want to remember that during the Cold War, the Soviet Union occupied Eastern Europe, and they had to put down an insurrection in East Germany in 1953.
They had to invade Hungary in 1956.
They had to invade Czechoslovakia in 1968.
They almost had to invade Poland three times, except for the fact that the Polish Communist Party put down the trouble.
And furthermore, they had huge amounts of trouble with countries like Yugoslavia, Albania, and Romania.
The Soviets were up to their eyeballs in alligators in Eastern Europe, because it's very difficult in the modern world to occupy other countries.
You invariably run into resistance.
And I think that Putin fully understands this, and he does not want to invade Eastern Europe and certainly Western Europe.
And moreover, he does not have the capability.
Look at how the Russians have struggled to conquer the eastern one-fifth of Ukraine.
Just think about it.
The Russians have struggled to conquer the eastern one-fifth of Ukraine.
Does this look like the Wehrmacht in World War II?
Does this look like an army that's going to roll over Ukraine, then roll over Eastern Europe and threaten Germany or France or maybe even Britain?
I don't think so.
Does it mean if Putin can claim victory and it ends the way you think it will, does it mean there is more likelihood that China may make a move on Taiwan in the next two to three years?
I don't think so, Piers.
I think whether China moves on Taiwan is largely a function of the balance of power between China on one side and the United States, Taiwan, and Japan on the other side.
I don't think that if we lose in Ukraine, this will send a signal to Xi Jinping that we are weak and we won't fight, and therefore it's time for him to conquer Taiwan.
Liberal Democracy Under Threat00:02:57
I think, however, that the Ukraine war has significant consequences for Taiwan in that the fact that we have been pinned down in Ukraine has made it very difficult for us to fully pivot to East Asia and to put in place a formidable containment strategy against China.
And furthermore, what we have done as a result of our foolishness with regard to Ukraine is we have driven the Russians into the arms of the Chinese.
So the Ukraine war has weakened our ability to contain China.
And to be honest, it's weakened our ability somewhat to defend Taiwan.
But it's not because we're going to lose in Ukraine.
It's because of the fact that the Ukraine war, and by the way, the Middle East conflict as well, has inhibited our ability to fully pivot to East Asia, which is what we should have done a long time ago.
Professor, Barley, I'm curious, what keeps you awake at night?
Is it the fear of artificial intelligence turning rogue?
Is it the fear of climate change ravaging the planet?
Is it the fear of nuclear war?
What do you think is the most likely threat to our existence in the rest of your lifetime?
Well, if you're talking about a threat to our existence, the possibility of nuclear war has to be number one on the list.
But thankfully, I don't think there's a serious chance of a nuclear war that would end up in our annihilation.
That possibility is always there, but it is extremely unlikely to happen.
What actually keeps me up at night is thinking about the state of liberal democracy in the West.
I'm actually somebody who loves liberal democracy.
I'm very thankful that I was born in the United States of America, and I'm very worried about where this country is headed.
And I have long believed that if you have a national security state, a country that's always fighting wars, that country becomes militarized.
And when it becomes militarized and develops a national security bureaucracy, what happens is that you begin to see your civil liberties being threatened.
And I think we see that at play in the United States.
So I worry greatly about the state of liberal democracy.
Professor, always great to talk to you.
I always learn a lot when I talk to you, which I say to you every time, but I do.